Over the past week I had to work hard to get my office (finally) de-cluttered, organized and finished in time to set-up a pack and play in there. Yes that was a strange sentence for me to type. This weekend we're watching our two-year old niece all three days and I thought it'd be easier to have her sleep in a pack and play in my office than just sleeping in my daybed (where she could walk out and down our steep stairs whenever she wakes up at 6 am). This is our second day with her and I won't go into too much detail because I'm planning a "Mommy for a Weekend" recap post for next week. Let's just say it's been fun, and exhausting. But mostly fun so far.

Today I want to discuss the process of organizing my office. I'm certainly not the best person to give de-hoarding advice since I've made two Goodwill trips, donated 4 paper bags full of stuff and threw away one large trash bag full of items, and yet I still feel like there's too much in that small room. Basically my process was putting everything from the closet, desk and old bookshelf into donate, keep and trash piles. Just like with clothes, if I haven't used (or worn) an item in over a year then it gets donated or thrown away. This did help a lot in the initial cleaning process. This past Wednesday, I still had a little too much stuff in there to neatly store in my closet or under the bed, so I drank two glasses of wine and made one more pile of donation items.

Basically my organizing tip for today is wine. If you need to make yourself get rid of things (and silence that voice in your head that says "one day I'm totally going to use this"), it takes 1+ glass of wine (or alcohol of choice). Okay maybe that's terrible advice. It worked for me but of course, I also don't want to advocate drinking on a regular basis to clean house. I have two design books on organizing that I'm going to try to review this weekend, while the niece is down for a nap. I'm hoping those might help me complete even a little more clean-out for a very zen-like space, one that I might actually start sewing, designing and hanging out in.

It sounds like the niece is ready for some coloring. And on that note, here's a little design project I want to work on for my office - a custom poster. I'm thinking something large and bold, with an inspirational quote. Here are a few ideas I'm loving right now.

I may also use lyrics from a song for a custom poster design. Right now, I'm loving this line from Florence and the Machine's Shake It Out: "It's hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake him off." I definitely need to be reminded on a daily basis to shake off all that weighs me down and live my life to the fullest. I promise some office photos once I find curtains, finish painting my craft table and perhaps do just a little more de-cluttering. But for now, I've got some coloring to do.